II RIZAL'S NETWORKS IN FRANCE

II

RIzAL’S NETwORkS IN FRANCE

Figure 34. Juan Luna, “La Parisienne”. Rizal is among the three Filipinos seated at the background of the painting. (GSIS Collection)

A.

LIFE IN FRANCE Living in Paris was not so easy for José Rizal, whose income was already barely sufficient even before the eviction of the Mercados from Calamba. It became even more problematic thereafter, especially as Paris was the most expensive capital of Europe at that time. The cost of living in Berlin was about three times cheaper which would explain why Rizal stayed longer in Germany than in France, and spent much more time in Spain. Since the cost of accommodation increased by fifty percent during the Paris 1889 World Exposition,71 Rizal had to stay with Valentin Ventura in October 1889.72

Most French people were totally ignorant of the Philippines. In Marseilles in 1882, Rizal was routinely mistaken for an American, a Chinese, or a Japanese.73 Similar mishaps occurred in 1883: during

Figure 35. Residence of the Pardo de Taveras in Paris (Pardo de Tavera Library and Special Collections of the Rizal Library of Ateneo de Manila University)

an exhibition at the Palais de l’Industrie et des Beaux-arts, he was taken for a Japanese.74 He himself noted, that in Spain, he would have been mistaken for a Chinese. When he visited Laënnec Hospital on 18 June 1883, the ‘Japanese’ Rizal was introduced to a Frenchman (Mr. ‘Saint Rémiz’75) who, as it turned out, had lived in Japan for years, to the pleasant surprise of both. At that time, the Japanese were the most popular Asians in France, owing to the popularity of a trend called Japonisme, 76 which blossomed at the end of the century with the Art Nouveau (New Art) school, borne out of the influence of Japanese aesthetics and artists such as the masters of ukiyo-e—Hokusai, Hiroshige and Utamaro, whose color prints were in high demand in the beginning of the 1860s. Like Rizal himself, the Japanese were newcomers to France and were highly educated, but more prosperous.

Rizal’s financial constraints did not allow him access to the French high society, ‘le grand monde’, as it was called at time. However, Rizal’s life in Paris, particularly when he went to Juan Luna’s atelier and the house of the Pardo de Taveras, he was able to establish connections with some of the French intellectual elite through his illustrado friends.

B.

MEDICAL NETWORKS IN PARIS

Among Rizal’s Parisian friends, the wealthiest illustrados were the Pardo de Taveras:77 thanks to the income generated by their real estate properties in the Philippines, they could afford a 14 Avenue de Wagram address, in the expensive 8th arrondissement (district) in 1886,78 and seaside holidays at Berck, in the north of France, in a pleasant villa close to Baroness James de Rothschild’s chalet. 79 Their aristocratic origins and their wealth made them fully part of the Parisian international elite.

Dr. Félix Pardo de Tavera’s older brother, Dr. Trinidad Hermenegildo,80 was a physician, too, and an orientalist who graduated in Malay in June 188581 at the École Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes82—an institution Rizal himself visited in 1889, at the instigation of Trinidad.83 As with the Pardo de Taveras, two thirds of the Paris-based young male illustrados worked for the health sector. Felipe Zamora,84 whom Rizal met in June 1883, was privately training in obstetrics with Étienne Tarnier85 in Paris. Thanks to Joaquín González86 who had specialized in ophthalmology under Louis de Wecker, Rizal became one of Wecker’s assistants in 1885.

Figure 36. Marriage Certificate of Paz Pardo de Tavera and Juan Luna. (Archives de Paris, V4E 6106)

Figure 37. Doña Juliana Gorricho vda. de Pardo de Tavera and Paz Pardo de Tavera (Pardo de Tavera Library and Special Collections of the Rizal Library of the Ateneo de Manila University)

Jose Albert87 got his medical degree in Madrid in 1889 before leaving for the Paris Exposition, after which he proceeded to Brussels where he shared accommodations with Rizal for a while. Juan Luna’s younger brother, Antonio,88 who sailed to Europe in 1886, was a pharmacist who first worked in Paris as a microbiologist at the prestigious Institut Pasteur under the supervision of Dr. Pierre Paul Émile Roux,89 then in Ghent as deputy-director of the biology laboratory.90 Ariston Bautista-Lin,91 an old relation of Rizal’s, who came to Paris in 1889 for the Exposition, obtained his doctorate in medicine two years later in Madrid. There were exceptions to the Filipino inclination to work in the health sector, such as Mariano Cunanan92 in 1883, who studied agronomy, and since the end of 1884, the painters Félix Resurrección Hidalgo93 and Juan Luna, one of Rizal’s closest friends.94 Luna had been awarded a gold medal at the National Art Exhibition of Madrid95 in 1884.

The Boustead Family 1889 was probably the most interesting and pleasant of Rizal’s trips to France. Rizal really enjoyed going from the Pardo de Taveras to the Bousteads, finding in both places Filipino cooking and a warm welcome.96 The Bousteads were much richer than the Pardo de Taveras, but were neither proper illustrados nor scholars. A British citizen known in the Philippines as Eduardo, Edward Boustead Jr. was the son of a Malay mother, Jabidah, and the British Edward Boustead,97 who had founded a prosperous trading company in Singapore at the end of the 1820s. The first Edward Boustead had three children with his Malay mistress: Edward, Jane and John. After founding the Singapore Chamber of Commerce, he came back to England in 1850 with his children, to coordinate the main branches of his business: Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Manila.

Figure 38. In Luna’s atelier (from left to right): Rizal with a turban, Paz Pardo de Tavera, Nelly Boustead, Félix Resurreción Hidalgo and Adelina Boustead; seated, Mrs. Boustead (Pardo de Tavera Library and Special Collections of the Rizal Library of the Ateneo de Manila University)

Figure 39. Nelly Boustead (Retrato Collection of the Filipinas Heritage Library)

Figure 40. José Rizal’s drawing of Adelina Boustead, 1889. (Retrato Collection of the Filipinas Herigage Library)

Born circa 1837, and educated in Europe—in Germany and England—Edward Boustead Jr. was sent back to Asia by his father after 1850. Working in the company office in Manila at the end of the 1860s, he created his own firm—E. Boustead Jr.98—and married Dolores de Ocampo, a mestiza, who gave him three children, Helen (aka Nelly, 1871),99 Adelina (1876) and Edward Samuel100 (1887, born in Paris). Living at 3 rue des Bassins101 (Paris 16), E. Boustead represented the Philippine cigar company La Puerta del Sol102 at the 1889 World Exposition in Paris. At the end of the century, the Boustead Group103 developed numerous activities, including merchant banking and shipping, the latter giving birth to Keppel Group.

Thanks to the Pardo de Tavera’s salon, Rizal and some of their illustrado friends went to Mallat de Bassilan’s house, where a collection of artifacts from the Southern Philippines was displayed. Contrary to F. Villanueva’s assertions,104 they could not have met Jean Mallat himself, as he died in 1863, but rather his son, MarcelJacques,105 a novelist, librettist, and translator. Another close relation of the Pardo de Taveras was Edmond Plauchut.106 After first being shipwrecked in Cape Verde while sailing to Manila, E. Plauchut landed in Manila in 1852, and remained in the Philippines and the Far East for a decade.107 Plauchut gathered testimonies on the

Figure 41. Edmond Plauchut’s file. Library of the Société de Géographie, 1882

execution of the three priests following the Cavite rebellion in 1872,108 and interviewed Joaquín Pardo de Tavera in 1877.109 As a republican and a liberal, he was close to French Masonic networks, if not himself a Mason.

C.

THE MASONIC CONNECTION

Though Masonry reached the Philippines around 1850, its membership was mostly limited to Europeans and its influence occasional.110 During the 1880s, it was thus mostly in Spain that Filipinos were initiated. The first lodge admitting proper Indios (and not mestizos) and Cubans as members was the lodge Porvenir, to which Graciano López Jaena111 had been affiliated to before 1884. One of the more active lodges in Madrid was Solidaridad No. 359, founded in April 1886,112 and which López Jaena eventually joined in 1887.113 With the support of López Jaena, Marcelo H. del Pilar founded the Propaganda committee in Manila in 1888, and then fled to Spain to avoid capture. López Jaena established the lodge Revolución No.65 in Barcelona in April 1889.

Though some authors believe that Rizal entered the lodge Acacia No. 9 as early as 1883,114 the assertion remains undocumented.115 Rizal’s first contacts with Masonry were indirect, through the republican Miguel Morayta y Sagrario,116 one of Rizal’s professors in philosophy and universal history at the Universidad de Madrid. Morayta had entered Masonry in July 1863117 and was one of its dignitaries in the 1870s. Morayta knew Rizal since 1883,118 and was present at the dinner in Madrid on 25 June 1884 celebrating the triumphs of Luna and Félix Hidalgo at the 1884 Madrid Exposition of Fine Arts, during which Rizal made a remarkable speech on the relation between Spain and Philippines. No sources prior to 1889 mentions Rizal’s affiliation to any Madrid lodge. However, he was already a Freemason in May 1889119 and appears as a grade 3 (i.e. ‘master’) in lodge Solidaridad No. 53 (symbolic name Dimasalang, ie. Noli Me Tangere) in 1890,120 a lodge exclusively for Filipinos.

In Paris, the illustrado network was thus capable of connecting with some members of the French liberal and masonic elite, even more so because Trinidad Pardo de Tavera and his brother Félix established a masonic triangle with Antonio Luna and Ariston Bautista-Lin121 in 1889. All Propaganda122 members had been admitted into Masonry between 1882 and 1890.

Figure 42. Diploma of ‘maître du Grand Orient de France’ delivered in absentia on 15 February 1892 to ‘Rizal, homme de lettres (writer)’

The Paris World Exposition gave French Masons an opportunity to organize the Congrès Maçonnique International du Centenaire (Masonic International Congress for the Centenary),123 1789-1889, on 16 to17 July 1889. The Congress was probably one of the reasons for the visit to Paris of Segismundo Moret y Prendergast,124 a former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and later Prime Minister, who had asked for a discussion with the author of Noli Me Tangere. 125 Rizal knew the minister’s son, Lorenzo (whom he described as a “semi-friend"), as they traveled together to visit Professors Jagor and Virchow in Germany in December 1886.126 Rizal had also met Moret in Madrid once before, during the banquet honoring the painters Luna and Hidalgo in June 1884.127

On his way back to Manila, just before leaving for Marseilles, Rizal was received on 14 October 1891 (Figure 42) in the Temple de l’Honneur et de l’Union128 (part of Grand Orient de France), with which the brothers Pardo de Taveras and Juan Luna were already affiliated. Ten years later, on 18 June 1901, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera founded a new Filipino lodge under the French Grand Orient,129 “Logia Rizal”, which was later affiliated under the Spanish Grand Orient.